Free Down Sand Mountain by Steve Watkins

and sleep with you?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because. You’re too big.”
    “I’ll lay the opposite of you, head to feet.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “You have toe jam and your feet stink and you chew your toenails.”
    “Please?”
    “Why are you such a baby?”
    “I’m not. I just can’t get to sleep, either. I keep thinking.”
    “Well, I’m thinking, too, so leave me alone.”
    “About what?”
    “About stuff.”
    “About going down to the Boogerbottom to pass out the flyers for Dad?”
    “No.”
    “About school stuff?”
    “No.”
    “About a girl?”
    “No.”
    “About your peter?”
    “Shut up. No.”
    “About the JV team?”
    “Maybe.”
    “About what position you play?”
    “No.”
    “What position
do
you play? Are you the quarterback or is David Tremblay?”
    “David Tremblay. He’s always the quarterback.”
    “What are you?”
    “Guard.”
    “First string?”
    “Second.”
    “Is there a third string?”
    “No.”
    “Oh.”
    “What do you mean, ‘Oh’? I’d like to see
you
out there.”
    “I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought you should be first string.”
    “Well, I’m not.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’m not good enough. Coach says I’m not focused.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means when he’s explaining the next play we’re supposed to learn, I’m standing over there thinking about some song on the radio in my head.”
    “Oh.”
    “And then they give me a hard time because my brother thinks he’s a Negro.”
    “Oh. What do you say back?”
    “Nothing. I tell them to shut up.”
    “Do you really tell them to shut up?”
    “Yes. Of course. What did you think I would say?”
    “I don’t know. Hey, Wayne.”
    “What? Jeezum Crow, what is this — a hundred questions?”
    “They didn’t give me my red belly yet.”
    “Don’t worry. Just when you least expect it, they’ll get you.”
    “I don’t think so. They won’t let me go to the bathroom.”
    “Well, that’s what you get for going to school looking like a Negro.”
    “Why do you keep saying ‘Negro’? You sound like Mom.”
    “It’s what you’re supposed to call them, that’s why.”
    “Since when?”
    “Since this year.”
    “Says who?”
    “Says LBJ.”
    “Well, anyway, they won’t let me go to the bathroom.”
    “So just go outside.”
    “I do, but I might get caught.”
    “Then do what Tink did.”
    What he was talking about was when Tink was in first grade, two years ago, she was very nervous, and so for about a week she took a cigar box to school with her. Everybody thought she had her supplies in there, but instead what she was doing was using it to put her poop in if she had to go when she was at school so she could bring it home and flush it in our own toilet and say good-bye to it there and watch it go down the way little kids like to do. For some reason that made her less nervous.
    All of a sudden I felt very tired — mostly tired of talking to Wayne. He used to be a lot nicer to me back when he was a Lone Wolf, before I started seventh grade and he went into the eighth and became a big hotshot second-string guard on the JV football team, even if he wasn’t focused. I thought about telling him that, but what was the use?
    The funny thing was, when I decided to quit talking to Wayne, he started talking to me. Mostly it was about football stuff, like how he couldn’t do any of the blocking right, and he was always getting holding calls on him in drills, and they had this one drill where it was just a lineman and a running back, and the running back was supposed to run straight into a lineman and through him, and the lineman was supposed to not let him and was supposed to tackle him instead. Wayne said he always got run through. I guess he really meant run
over,
but that was the way they talked in football.
    Another thing he told me was a lot of the guys chewed tobacco on the team, and you knew it because they spit their Red Man on the field and